It's summertime in Montana, and because we ranch, because animals and plants and the weather are on their own time, I sit around and wait a lot. There's a book in front of me, on the dining room table, and I would have read to the end of the chapter, but something makes me lay it down, open, in favor of writing. I'm not really sure how much time I have; all I know is once ten o'clock comes, I'll be walking across the creek and into the stack yard--the place where we wrap the bales of hay in air-tight plastic and lay them down in long rows, like blown up tobacco rolls in bright white.
There's a boy out there I'm not so sure about. His hands--what I've seen of them--soft around a can of Coors Banquet, the tips of his fingers plush, prints pushing into the skin of my knuckles when he reaches across me--make me a little uncomfortable. I work longer hours, use those appendages more, and yet the softness of him is the same as mine. Why am I soft? But he makes my brother happy, and that makes me happy--my brother needs friends, and I need the reassurance that he has them.
More waiting; I watch them walk down the path to the gate after lunchtime, sunlight on their necks, making my brother's tan skin shine. I watch his friend run, lumbering a little across the dusty yard. The cat swings her head around and peers at me with something akin to confusion, but that's not it--she's a little deaf, a lot blind, or vice versa, maybe--she's lost in thought. The kind of thought anyone can have when all of their vital senses are dulled, the kind of lethargy that comes from being far underwater or in a small, locked room.
Two hours before I go to work, at the restaurant on the west side of town.
More waiting.
I should shower, probably. Wait until the cold water runs hot. Step out, wait until the air dries my hair. Find the clothes I need, wait until I have to leave.
Light spills through the window onto the table, and I let my head fall forward onto my forearms, cheek cooled by the plastic table cover.
Or maybe, today, someone can wait for me.
Comments
Log in or register to post comments.